Bridging the Mobility Gap: a Spatial Assessment of Transit Equity, Network Resilience and Public Safety in Durg

Abstract

The accelerated pace of urbanization in India\'s Tier-2 cities has exacerbated issues concerning spatial planning, mobility, and transit safety. Durg City, located within the Durg-Bhilai industrial corridor, exemplifies these challenges through unchecked residential sprawl, bottleneck congestion, and unequal public transit distribution. This study proposes a robust GIS-based evaluation framework to analyse Durg’s transportation infrastructure spatially. Utilizing open-source Quantum GIS (QGIS) and OpenStreetMap datasets, this research integrates topological network resilience (Betweenness Centrality), accident hotspot detection via Kernel Density Estimation (KDE), and service-area accessibility modelling. The findings demonstrate severe topological vulnerability in central commercial corridors and expansive \"transit deserts\" in peripheral residential zones, which directly correlate to a 99% concentration of localized, non-highway traffic accidents within residential neighbourhoods. This paper presents a cost-effective, data-driven methodology for municipal authorities to prioritize targeted infrastructure upgrades and enhance sustainable urban mobility.

Introduction

India’s Tier-2 cities are experiencing rapid, often unplanned urban growth, leading to inefficient land use, rising private vehicle dependence, weak public transport access, and infrastructure bottlenecks. Durg City in the Durg–Bhilai industrial corridor exemplifies these challenges, with overlapping industrial and residential zones and increasing pressure on road networks due to peri-urban expansion and poor zoning enforcement.

The study uses GIS-based methods in QGIS to analyze the city’s transport system, including road network mapping, land-use classification, transit accessibility modelling, and accident hotspot analysis. Techniques such as betweenness centrality, isochrones, and kernel density estimation are used to identify vulnerable road segments, transit coverage gaps, and safety hotspots.

Results show a predominantly residential land-use structure, causing concentrated commuting flows toward central areas. The road network has critical bottlenecks with low redundancy, making key intersections highly vulnerable to disruptions. Public transport accessibility is uneven, with large peripheral “transit deserts” that lack walkable access to transit, increasing reliance on private vehicles. Accident data also clusters along high-traffic, high-centrality corridors and mixed industrial–residential zones.

Conclusion

This study successfully implemented a comprehensive GIS framework to diagnose urban mobility challenges in Durg City. The findings definitively show that the city’s transport issues are driven by disjointed land-use planning. Peripheral residential sprawl has outpaced transit infrastructure, creating vast transit deserts and severe central network bottlenecks. Furthermore, the spatial clustering of accidents reveals critical safety deficits along both regional highways and internal residential networks. To mitigate these challenges, municipal authorities must prioritize targeted interventions: establishing new transit routes within identified peripheral deserts, investing in parallel arterial ring roads to reduce topological vulnerability, and aggressively implementing localized traffic-calming measures within residential zones. This spatial methodology provides a cost-effective, replicable blueprint for sustainable urban transport planning in resource-constrained Tier-2 cities.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Aryansh Pandey, Anandita Singh, Adarsh Tiwari, Hritika Kashyap, Shweta Katre. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.